Global Sports
Thymen Arensman soloed to another win on stage 19 of the Tour de France on Friday, surprisingly outlasting Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar on the climb to La Plagne, the final ‘hors categorie’ mountain of this year’s race.
Florian Lipowitz, meanwhile, put 41 seconds into Oscar Onley to all but seal third place and the white jersey competition.
News broke on Thursday evening that the stage would be truncated and rerouted due to an agricultural emergency in the area, so opportunities to create the sort of chaos we saw yesterday were limited. That didn’t stop Primoz Roglic from reprising his adventurism from stage 18 and heading off up the notoriously steep Col du Pre, along with Lenny Martinez and stage 16 winner, Valentin Paret-Peintre.
But any hopes the trio had of an epic raid through one of the most beautiful parts of the Alps were undermined by UAE’s determination to keep them within arm’s reach all day. Roglic descended the Cormet de Roselend superbly to build an advantage of around a minute, but was shut down with ease in the valley that led to the La Plagne climb.
